Share something about yourself

I’m from Egypt, but currently I live in Koblenz, Germany for my Masters. I’m a graduate from Higher Institute of Computer Science & Information Technology in El Shorouk City in Egypt. I’ve worked as an Augmented Reality and Game Developer for 2 years and as a C++ developer for 6 months, and after that I started working as a web developer. When I encountered Coursera’s Data Science courses offered by Johns Hopkins University it really changed my thoughts about the world and drove me to pursue my current Masters in Web Science at the University of Koblenz.

What was your first Coursera course, how did you find out about it and why did you decide to take it?

My First course on Coursera was Machine Learning by Prof. Andrew Ng., and a friend recommended it to me. I decided to take it because I really love that branch of science and I just graduated from college at that time. Also I wanted to get a job in the Machine Learning field so I wanted to deepen my understanding in Machine Learning.

What’s your favorite Coursera course and why?

It is Getting and Cleaning Data by Johns Hopkins because I love the idea of big data analysis. It feels like you could see the world from a totally different perspective than most people. Also it’s about how you could analyze social media effect in constructing global opinion, and how people behave towards some specific issues, topics or news. Plus, it helps in improving medical data analysis which directly impacts how to find new cures to uncured diseases, and many other life essential fields.

What impact have Coursera courses had on your life?

My first course with Coursera was back at the end of 2011, which really changed my way of looking at how science is taught worldwide, and added a lot of valuable information about the field to me. Then 3 years later, I asked my self what I really need in order to enhance my learning process. That’s when I found the great course titled “Learning How To Learn“, which was like a turning point in both my learning and career paths. It made me know a lot about how to study, how to get the most out of any course I take, how to organize my self task at work and memorize the important tips and tricks about my job overall.

The year after that, I took 3 Data Science courses by John Hopkins university, which changed my career path by making me start searching for Masters program in that new and totally interesting field.

Which course(s) do you Mentor? What do you like most about the course(s)?

I’m currently mentoring Getting and Cleaning Data, as I said before I really love the idea of Big Data analysis. It deals with how you could analyze social media effect in constructing the global opinion about something, and how people behave towards some specific issues, topics or recent and old news. Plus, it helps in improving medical data analysis, which has direct impact on ways of finding new cures to uncured diseases, and many other life essential fields.

What would be your number one tip to give to a new Mentor just starting out?

Remember when you were a learner and needed some help to make a progress for whatever purpose you took the course for. Everyone here is just like you, so be grateful to the opportunity you’ve got to help them and don’t ever keep any piece of knowledge you have away from the learners even if you don’t think it’s important – it might be crucial to some of the learners. Wish you happy and fruitful mentoring!

I did use google translator to understand your text so excuse me if I got something wrong …. you wanted to get some contact to a course mentor or teacher I would suggest the forums course on Coursera … or please share your course link.

Omar, nice to meet you! This “Getting and Cleaning Data” course that you mentor seemed highly scientific and statistical for me. But your shared insights along that course made me reconsider enrolling in there. Thanks!

Hello Omar,
Its a Course everyone that likes learning should explore. Am now in week 3 and am so eager to finish the course. Omar your story is an inspiration and i suggest it should be shared across the globe. Thank you so much for your story and thank you #coursera for the course; Learning how to learn.

Tank you very much for that detailed answers. I agree that it is important to share the knowledge you have. It is always time to tell something if you want, it is always time to ask questions.
I am sure that people who study maths, technology are the samrtes people and I admire and trust their knowledge. At the same time I think that as a teacher of English as foreign language I have something to share too. There is my life experience, working experience and many other aspects of my personality too.
I started my first Coursera course “ShapingTheWayWeTeachEnglish” and I am happy that I did not stop and continued to study various courses of Coursera. They totally changed me and my life. I am dedicated to online education and strongly believe that there is a way to change your profession, to learn many which you did not have previously.

Thanks for your feedback … if you allow me … I would like to highlight a point you said “I am sure that people who study maths, technology are the smartest people”, there is no such a thing named smartest, because intelligence have many different types and everyone had his/her own kind of intelligence and at that point we learn from her/him.

Your story is inspiring Saida … and I wish you happy and fruitful learning always … I wish you could also make it to mentoring a course so that you could pass on your knowledge to everyone else.

Thanks Omar for that tip, i have always wanted to do something with Data analysis, but it seem far-fetched in this part of the world (Nigeria) then i found Coursera but i thought having an online class will require a large chunk of data and constant power supply which is very expensive to get here but with your words, i have a change of mind, no matter how expensive it is, i will go for the classes, i really appreciate those words…

I am a first time R programmer, but have basic knowledge about programming. Could someone please help me with an example of generating multiple reports?

WHAT I HAVE:
Data containing an ID
A location allocated to ID
Time ID was at location
WHAT I NEED:
A separate report for every individual ID showing the time at every location.
There are 100 different IDs, therefore 100 different reports must be generated to give comments about the IDs and their locations in a certain time period.

hello,
I’m studying astrophysics and I need to learn the language python. I’m working with samples of black holes and I have to process them, getting results through integration, plotting and etc. there are many courses in this website that’s why I’m confused and don’t know which course to take. I would be grateful to have your comment and suggestions.
thanks

Hello, I hope you can help. I’v started the SQL for Data Science course about one week early and hope you can assist since the forum is not yet open. I’m trying to take the coding practice quiz and I’m not sure what to enter in the “Enter Answer Here” box. The question is retrieve all data from a specific table and the SQL statement to retrieve all data from the table is already listed so that’s confusing. Anyway, I delete and retype the query statement and click run which gives me the data from the table and no error. If you are familiar with this type of coding quiz, please advice what type of response I should place in the “Enter Answer Here” box. I’ve already tried entering the query statement and that did not work and then I tried entering the results from the query and that did not work either. I wonder is this a problem because the course has not actually started. Let me know. Thank you!